Aston Villa owner Randy Lerner must learn from history

History will not be kind to the club’s American ­owner when they ­explain how it all went wrong

The last time we met he was talking enthusiastically about reading old boardroom minutes from the 1930s that he’d found in the club’s archives.

It’s a shame he doesn’t seem to have studied more recent history – from the 1980s and the last time Villa got relegated.

Tuesday’s home defeat by ­Newcastle was their 12th league loss in a dire season and plunged them into the drop zone.

But the lurch towards relegation has so many echoes of how the 1982 European champions ended up bottom of the table just five years later.

Sadly, ­Lerner, once hailed as the ­billionaire trying to put the club back at the top of the game, now seems more like another Doug Ellis with a few extra noughts.

Under Ellis, Villa were always a boom-and-bust club.

Managers Ron Atkinson, ­Brian Little and John Gregory tasted success, but were never allowed to make the extra signing that might take the club the next step forward.

That’s why Lerner fell out with former boss Martin O’Neill – but what has happened since then has been a mess.

Kevin MacDonald was promoted but didn’t want the job. Gerard Houllier was out of touch with the English game, while Gary McAllister and Gordon Cowans were just starting to come to terms with the demands of management when they were shunted aside.

Alex McLeish was on a hiding to nothing, coming from ­Birmingham.

Lerner has ended up putting his faith in Lambert, a manager with relatively little experience of the Premier League, who has spent more than £20m on players with even less know-how.

He has chopped and changed players, using 28 so far this season.

Occasional glimpses of promise have been followed by dismal displays – and sometimes all in the same game.

But then inexperienced players give you inconsistent performances. Lambert is running out of time to change that.

Villa have been here before. Back in 1984 Graham Turner was the rookie boss who took over from the great Tony

Barton with instructions to trim the wage bill, shed stars like Dennis Mortimer and Peter Withe, and rebuild with young players.

Two years later he was sacked after the first team lost 6-0 at Nottingham Forest and the reserves 7-0 to Manchester United on the same Saturday.

His replacement Billy McNeill – or Billy McBingo as the players christened him for his bizarre team talks – could do nothing to rescue a team that wasn’t good enough.

What’s next? Well, Lerner ­issued a vote of confidence in his manager on Monday, but even that contained the bizarre sentence: “Fortunes can shift quickly in this game and a sense that one has it right can become grave doubt in a matter of a few games.”

Individually the players that Lambert has signed or promoted all show promise.

Summer signing Christian Benteke has been one of the finds of the season, while Andi Weimann has an instinctive finishing ability.

But to expect a whole team of rookies to survive together was always too much and, with just 14 games left, it looks too late.

The really scary thing is that while, back in 1988, Graham Taylor had the resources to put the club back in the top flight in one go, Villa would be hopelessly equipped for the 46-game slog of the Championship now.

Lerner’s chance to act in this transfer window has come and gone and the club are tumbling.

History will not be kind to the club’s American ­owner when they ­explain how it all went wrong.